“An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection—to the conceptual identification of your inner states—you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception. The men who scorn or dread introspection take their inner states for granted, as an irreducible and irresistible primary, and let their emotions determine their actions. This means that they choose to act without knowing the context (reality), the causes (motives), and the consequences (goals) of their actions.”
American liberals have long fantasized about how different life would be in ‘enlightened and tolerant’ Europe instead of having to deal with people they regard as knuckle draggers here at home. Well, a few got their chance and what they say should serve as a dire warning.
Wired magazine spoke to several Americans who fled Trump’s America for the European continent about their experiences.
Let’s just say the fantasy they were sold turned out to be a lie.
A progressive woman going by “Annie” had noticed Americans on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit bragging about how exciting life was in the United Kingdom’s suburbs. “Annie” was particularly enchanted by the promise of ‘free’ healthcare, ‘excellent’ transportation, and the country’s ‘rich’ culture.
But “Annie” soon received a rude awakening about the liberal ‘paradise’ she thought she was entering.
She was taken aback by Britain’s garbage NHS, lower salaries, and basic items that the country lacks, such as dryers and dishwashers.
Now, she and her husband want to run back home.
From Wired:
But the reality of life in the UK was dramatically different to what she’d imagined. “There are huge misconceptions about access to quality health care, standard of living … the quality of life is significantly lower than in the US,” she says, citing the challenges she experienced with the National Health Service’s maternity care—having moved while pregnant with her first child—as well as the lack of disposable income in Britain, thanks to lower salaries.
“Things in the UK that are considered luxury items are very common” in America, like a dishwasher and dryer, she adds.
Annie says she experienced a high amount of anti-American sentiment straight away. “I found it particularly surprising how people feel so comfortable mocking my accent and culture, even in a workplace environment,” she says. “The UK is very much a place of ‘it is what it is,’ but as Americans we are taught to always improve and strive for better things.”
Annie and her husband now have an exit plan for summer next year, the earliest their employers would allow them to relocate back home.
Kate Glavan, a leftist influencer from New York, had her own unpleasant experience with the U.K.
She fled to London in late 2024 after Trump’s election and quickly found out how difficult it was to perform her job.
Brands were more reluctant to work with her because she was mostly speaking to a much smaller British audience. In the end, she ended up returning to New York earlier this year.
An American named “Josh” who fled to Germany in 2023 fearing that Trump would win the following year also had a less-than-pleasant experience.
Despite speaking German, he had trouble finding work and struggled navigating the bureaucracy.
Moreover, he found the people in Germany far less friendly than those in America and never felt accepted.
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This was a similar reality for Josh, another American immigrant who asked to remain completely anonymous, citing concerns about backlash. He moved to Berlin in 2023, in part anticipating what might happen at the 2024 election, and also because he felt his life had hit standstill post-Covid. He had even lived in Germany before, spoke German, and had friends in Berlin.
But his expectations, particularly when it came to his career, didn’t align with reality.
“Finding work was so hard, and the endless bureaucracy had grown worse since I’d left,” he tells WIRED. “I missed the friendlier people, freedom of speech, and ease of daily life” in the US. He adds, “If you aren’t born and raised there, and don’t look German, you’ll never be fully accepted.
Then there’s “Nick,” an art director from New York who relocated with his wife to her home country of Poland in part because of his disgust with “right-wing populism” in America. Upon arriving, he immediately experienced culture shock as well.
What is happening in the US is also happening everywhere now, to the point I’m even a little hesitant in what I say to you, or anywhere online,” says Nick, an art director from New York who relocated to Poland in part because of right-wing populism in the US. He moved with his Polish wife to Krakow, where they have a young child, but despite these personal ties has found it difficult to adjust to the culture and bureaucracy.
Now Nick feels trapped in Europe where he says the politics aren’t much better—conceding that Poland both politically and culturally has strong right-wing popularity.
These liberals may have learned the hard way that the grass is not always greener on the other side, but still do not appear to have changed their political views.
The Republican-backed Ratepayer Protection Act, legislation aimed at constraining the higher electric bills that hit some consumers after data centers arrive, passed the House but failed in the Senate before that chamber recessed.
Democrats have touted a different data center bill, the GRID Savings Act, that would make the companies building out data centers pay for grid and transmission upgrades associated with the boom. GRID stands for Guarding Ratepayers from Increased Demand-costs.
Adam Swart of Crowds on Demand, a paid protester firm, weighed in on grassroots opposition to the buildout to data centers, describing it as “one of the strangest emerging bipartisan issues.”
“Tucker Carlson-style Republicans and progressive Democrats increasingly oppose them, while the establishments of both parties largely support them. I suspect Congress eventually passes ‘reform’ that sounds restrictive but actually makes it easier for the industry to build,” he told The Epoch Times.
AI could also spur action.
Amid the tech competition with China and AI-driven economic growth, Trump has cautioned against excessive regulation of the technology, which he has dubbed “super intelligence.” Yet some lawmakers, including many Democrats, want more guardrails on those systems as some industry leaders publicly worry about AI safety.
Cunningham said that while he is not in line with the leftmost wing of the Democrats, AI regulation would be “more populist than socialist,” and important for his party to address to win back support for 2028.
On Oct. 7, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), who has worked with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) on legislation to regulate AI, published a draft version of a bill that would impose a stricter liability standard on AI developers.
Other Priorities Carmack, the political scientist at the Stevens Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times she expects Democrats to apply pressure on AI and another contentious matter—immigration—through both legislation and spending negotiations.
Spencer too expects immigration to fuel spending battles between Republicans and Democrats.
Reconciliation bills passed by the GOP-controlled Congress have locked in years of funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
If Democrats perform well enough in the midterms, they could also step up their challenges to tariffs, food stamp cuts, the scope of military spending, and the Iran War, among other Trump policies.
The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, premium subsidies, which triggered the longest government shutdown in history in late 2025, may come back into focus too.
Jeffries and Schumer have both vowed to tackle ACA restrictions championed by Republicans.
Legislation unveiled on Oct. 1 by the New York Democratic delegation, which includes both legislators, would roll back limits to the scope of those who can use ACA premium tax credits, a result of last year’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.
“The ACA subsidies are a hugely popular issue, and Democrats would almost certainly make restoring them a priority,” said Spencer.
Limits and Division
Insiders and experts see a narrow and highly political path to some action as the threat of a Trump veto looms over possible Democratic attempts to legislate on their affordability promises.
Spencer said Democrats could “advance popular legislation that would require Trump to either sign it or veto it.”
Cunningham said Democrats could force hard choices through bills targeting the costs of everyday goods. He hopes the party will pursue legislation on prescription drug prices and anti-competitive practices by large corporations.
If Democrats rule Capitol Hill, they will still have to manage conflicts in their own camp.
At the Democratic National Committee’s August meeting, dueling resolutions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement—one calling for reform, the other for abolition—underscored ideological divides within the party.
Republican control of Congress during the first half of Trump’s second term was marked by conflict, both between different wings of the party and between the House and Senate.
Whether Democrats curb their infighting or not, the future looks explosive.
“This will be an adversarial two years in the run-up to the 2028 presidential elections,” Cormack predicted.
Democratic dominance on Capitol Hill—and just how adroitly they tangle with Trump—would also give voters a yardstick ahead of 2028.
“If Democrats want to build a lasting majority—if they want to build some momentum going into 2028—they’ve got to start making deliveries for people, for Americans who are getting crushed under this economy,” said Cunningham.
Trick-or-treating might cater to the gatherers of the world, but the full moon that falls just before Halloween is for the hunters. The Hunter’s Moon will join millions of jack-o’-lanterns across America to light up the night sky on October 26, 2026, peaking just after midnight.
The moniker “Hunter’s Moon” refers to the full moon that follows the Harvest Moon, which is the one that falls closest to the fall equinox. This mid-autumn moon goes by many names in different cultures, but its symbolic associations with introspection, preparation, completion, and clarity are universal.
How the Hunter’s Moon Got Its Name
The Hunter’s Moon is to the Harvest Moon as meat is to potatoes. Equally important for seasonal nourishment, the Harvest Moon represents the traditional time for farmers’ final crops, while the following full moon centers on acquiring meat ahead of the winter months.
Moonlit fields that are cleared of crops and filled with plumped-up, pre-hibernation animals make for favorable hunting conditions. They were in fact so ideal that hunters regularly turned to the light of October’s full moon to help them stock up on a whole winter’s worth of meat for the family. While we can now turn to Costco for our seasonal hoarding needs, the deeply-rooted survival practice linked to the Hunter’s Moon has made the name stick.
Like most other full moons, the Hunter’s Moon goes by different monikers depending on who you talk to. In various Native American cultures, names for this moon reflect everything from harvest traditions to changing weather. The Dakota dub it the Drying Rice Moon in honor of rice preparations that take place prior to winter, while the Anishinaabe call it the Falling Leaves Moon for the crunchy, windswept leaves that color the air in autumn. The Ojibwe and Haida, meanwhile, know this full moon as the Freezing Moon or Ice Moon, and the Cree call it the Migrating Moon, a reference to southward-bound migratory birds. Other names for this moon are the Travel Moon, Dying Grass Moon, Blood Moon, and Sanguine Moon.
The Spiritual Symbolism Behind the Hunter’s Moon
While the history of the Hunter’s Moon is all about stocking the pantry, the symbolic side is more about taking stock of your mindset. The month of October spans a full lunar cycle that marks the transition from harvest to preservation, culminating in the Hunter’s Moon.
Across different traditions, this time of year has long been marked by a shift in the air: in Celtic culture, this window brushes right up against Samhain, a time when the veil to the spiritual world is lowered, and communication with ancestors and spirits is enhanced. Similarly, across parts of India, this same lunar phase coincides with Sharad Purnima, a moonlit celebration of the closing of the monsoon season. A common ritual is to soak kheer, a type of rice pudding, under the light of the full moon and then eat it at dawn. It’s the first full month of fall after the autumn equinox, providing a prime opportunity for internal reflection on the connections and feelings accumulated throughout the year.
With winter comes a focus on preparing for the season ahead—not just in terms of getting and storing what we need, but also protecting the parts of your life that serve you and pruning those that don’t.
Think of it as a last sliver of light leading you to an entrance you can slip through before the door closes. In other words, it’s a nudge to stop putting things off. Whether that means finally having that tough conversation, walking away from a situation that has run its course, or simply dealing with the emotions you’ve been avoiding, it’s a true act of self-preservation—a chance to clear the air now instead of letting those unresolved things weigh you down all winter.
How to Celebrate the Hunter’s Moon
The moon has many different faces, and with that, many ways to honor them. Because this phase is all about balancing decisiveness with deliberation, you can lean into whatever feels most grounding for you right now.
Like a hunter, it’s important to observe your surroundings before deciding where to aim your energy. In a day-to-day sense, that can mean writing down your abundances—and what might be dragging you down—to narrow in on what deserves your focus ahead of a lower-energy season. Full moons are naturally tied to release, making this an ideal time to drop what no longer serves you. Whether that means letting go of bad habits built up throughout the year or intense emotions that will only weigh you down in the season ahead, this is your chance to clear the slate.
And amidst all that release and restock, like with any full moon, the Hunter’s Moon is also a chance to practice gratitude. Under the bright light of the full moon, thank the universe for the abundance of the past harvest and anything that’s serving you, and simply enjoy the beauty of the moon framed by the fall foliage.
Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering a bill called the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. That isn’t a very descriptive name, but the author of a fine Substack called Energy Talking Points has a better one — he calls it “Freedom-to-Build legislation,” and says that it’s the biggest attempt at permitting reform that the United States has made in 46 years.
One weird thing about this law is that it’s supported by pro-business and libertarian think tanks, like the Cato Institute, and also by a lot of left-wing NGOs like the Citizens’ Climate Lobby. How could such an odd alliance come together? Well, the short answer is that it involved some hardball politicking by an administration that takes its job a lot more seriously than any previous Republican administration of my lifetime.
But first, an explanation is in order of why permitting reform is so necessary, and why overhauling the system could reduce the cost of living and create hundreds of thousands of new American jobs.
At present, if you want to build a large infrastructure project in the U.S., such as a railway, power line, pipeline, wind farm, road, mine, or refinery, then you have to get a lot of permits, from federal agencies like the EPA, as well as from the state and the city that you’re in. But that on its own isn’t newsworthy — every country has building codes, pollution limits, and some form of environmental protection law.
But America is different from countries like Japan, Canada, and Australia (which have been outcompeting us in physical industry for a long time) because, in the United States (due to laws like NEPA that were signed by the traitorous Nixon Administration in the 1970s):
The environmental laws are vague. If you’re a builder, you must produce “environmental impact statements” (EISs) that spend hundreds or thousands of pages listing ways that your project might affect the environment, without any clear guidance on what impacts are and aren’t acceptable.
Building permits are easy to revoke if there’s a change in the administration. And it’s hard to persuade people to spend money on things like the Keystone XL Pipeline if you might have to stop work the moment that a different party is in the White House.
Some of these laws are enforced by private activists, not the government. Once you file your EIS, anyone can sue you on the grounds that it isn’t thorough enough… and the window to file a lawsuit stays open for six years.
There is no presumption of innocence. If the court sides with the activists, then you have to stop work on the project until you can write a newer, longer EIS, which (due to the vagueness of the laws, and the burden of proof being on the accused) usually takes years and years of litigation before it’s finished.
For an example of how long these EISs can be, just consider that, back in 2008, San Francisco spent two-and-a-half years writing a 1,353 page report to try to convince a judge to let it add new bike lanes to the city streets. Bike lanes! A project that liberals, in theory, are supposed to like! (Now imagine how much worse the problem is if you’re trying to build an oil pipeline or a uranium mine.)
These are the problems that the BAAJA is trying to mitigate. If passed, it would shorten the lawsuit window from six years to 150 days, restore the presumption of innocence so that work can continue while the suit is being decided, and allow developers to sue government agencies for damages when they revoke existing permits without an urgent reason. There are a lot of other details, too — I can’t summarize everything in the 417-page bill, but suffice it to say that it does a lot of things that are necessary and long overdue.
But with the permitting process that we have right now, it’s no wonder that American industry is a risky, low-yield investment. And it’s no wonder that more and more of our energy and tangible goods have to be imported from abroad each year. As a reminder of how bad things are, just look at this S&P500 survey of development time on mines in different countries. The United States came in second-to-last, ahead of only Zambia.
One major takeaway from the permitting situation is that most leftists love big government way more than they love the environment. Just think about how California approved its high-speed rail system in a 2008 ballot measure, has spent about $14 billion on it over the next 18 years, and still has no operational track. This is because California state permitting laws are even worse than federal laws. (It’s worth remembering that, back in the 1930s, before any of these laws were enacted, Americans were able to build the Empire State Building in barely a year, with much more primitive technology.)
So how did Donald Trump’s Republicans manage to get a bunch of green energy activists to see the light and support permitting reform? It was simple, really — the GOP just had to apply the law impartially.
When Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, he froze development on a lot of wind and solar farms.
There wasn’t any good free-market reason for him to do that. These projects were not boondoggles like Solyndra, the solar firm that the Obama Administration scandalously subsidized back in 2009. It turns out that, over the last decade or so, a lot of gradual technological improvements have made wind and solar the cheapest way to generate power on windy and/or sunny days, especially in places like Texas, which is now producing more solar energy than California.
Yes, you read that right. The moment that technological progress made solar panels profitable, the pro-business state that doesn’t care about climate change started installing way more of them than the state that yelps loudly about the environment… but that really just loves big government for its own sake.
What was the effect of Donald Trump’s decision to pull all of these wind and solar permits? It forced the Democrats to the negotiating table. Suddenly, a lot of left-wing engineers realized that the only way they would actually be able to install more green energy is if they lobbied for a permitting reform bill that would make all construction easier.
To be fair, there were a minority of Democrats who were agitating for permitting reform during the Biden years. These were people like Noah Smith, the centrist economics blogger who spends half his time accusing Donald Trump and his allies of being corrupt and bigoted, and the other half trying (and usually failing) to get his fellow Democrats to admit to obvious but inconvenient truths: like that being soft on crime mainly harms poor people, or that refusing to teach algebra in public schools doesn’t fight racism.
As long as Joe Biden was in the White House, the Noah Smith wing of the party could be ignored by the other Democrats, who were usually content to spend lots and lots of money on infrastructure subsidies, and not pay much attention to whether any infrastructure was actually built with that money. (Remember that whether or not anything gets built, a lot of money still moves into the pockets of activists and consulting firms, which is kind of the point).
But once the Republicans were in the driver’s seat, they could put hard pressure on the Democrats, by holding solar and wind projects to the same standards as any other infrastructure. That made it possible to hammer out a deal with just enough support from green energy activists that it might get passed. And if the Cato Institute and Vox both agree that the new legislation will bring down Americans’ electricity prices… well, they’re probably right.
And if this bill makes it all the way through Congress and to the president’s desk, then there’s a good chance that it will be remembered as the greatest accomplishment of Donald Trump’s second term.
After all, without reforms like this one, trying to bring back American jobs via tariffs and tougher immigration laws is a sorry half-measure. (It doesn’t really matter if you exclude foreign competition when Americans themselves have little or no economic freedom.) But if the new bill gets signed into law, then it will remain in place, and keep making American industry more competitive, even if most of Trump’s other policies are reversed by future executive orders.
That is why I’m calling my senators and representative and telling them that I support the BAAJA. And that’s why you should, too. After all, Donald Trump ran on a promise to end job-killing regulation, and now is the moment when we’re within sight of the fulfilment of that promise.
Twilight Patriot is the pen name of a young American who lives in South Carolina, where he is currently working on a graduate degree. You can read more of his writings at his substack.
Halloween is more than just a great opportunity to score Snickers bars from your kids’ baskets. It’s also the chance to deck out your lawn in a way that strikes terror into the hearts of any liberal who walks by!
Here are 10 decorations you can put up to scare the living daylights out of your liberal neighbors:
1. Clarence Thomas inflatable: Simply plug him in and enjoy the shrieks of horror.
2. Biology textbook: Opened to the chapter that covers human genders… terrifying.
3. Graph showing minimal impact of climate change: Noooo!
4. Giant U.S. Constitution: With a spotlight on the Bill of Rights.
5. An in-person voting booth: Run for your lives, liberals!
6. Crazed serial killer with a chainsaw: Not because they’re liberal, he’s just really scary.
7. A Don-0′-lantern: Nobody thought he could look even more orange.
8. A skeleton wearing a Sophie Cunningham jersey: Is it pointing straight at you?
9. The Ten Commandments: The terror of liberal terrors.
When I read “The Art of the Deal” by Donald Trump back in 1987, my main takeaway was: “Believe you don’t need it. Believe you can live without it, and you just might get it.” I liked the idea, because it suggested nothing can ever have total power over you — even if it’s something you wish to have. I believe this is part of Trump’s secret, and also why so many hate him. The people who hate him sense the fact that he does not need them — he really doesn’t. Washington DC, Hollywood and the media are built on sycophants. These are people with no independent self, no sense of reality beyond a never ending desire to be at the cool kids’ table. The irony is that nobody at the cool kids’ table has a clue about anything.
Trump is authentic in his projection of someone who actually does not care about the rule or attitudes of sycophants. Even if he’s not always right, he always goes on his own judgment fueled by determination. Many of the leftists hate the man more than his policies. Many of the so-called conservatives agreed with all of his policies until Trump came along; they actually prefer Iran and Communism now, even if they once cheered for Reagan. Why? Because they cannot stand the fact he does not need them, never has, and never will. And this is precisely why millions of us voted for him three times — and would gladly do so again.
Woke 1 died out in the early 2020s when people got sick of the nags, scolds, and harpies trying to pester their way into power. But now these weirdos, losers, and mutations are back, trying to make “Woke 2: Wine Woman Boogaloo” happen. But it’s not going quite the way they want. It’s not happening quite the way they envisioned. Yeah, they’re whining and complaining like the shrill shrews they are, but people have finally figured out how best to deal with these yakking malcontents. You either mock them or ignore them, and when you do, they’ve got nothing.
Understand that woke is an attempt to seek power by weaponizing endless gripes and verbally bludgeoning us into compliance. They can’t actually make us do anything. As anyone who grew up on a playground before the generation of “We only use our words” kids knows, and as anyone with even a glancing familiarity with human history knows, the true basis of all human interaction is force. Somebody bigger and stronger will either beat up or kill the weaker, and thereby exercise power. We’ve gotten away from this basic truth. We stopped punching annoying people because that is aesthetically displeasing, and in retrospect, it seems to have been a mistake. There are a lot of people who should’ve been slugged when they ran their mouths but weren’t, and now they’re running their mouths endlessly with the expectation that we will conform. Hell, if you’d started hassling people about the patriarchy in my junior high school, you’d have been hanging from the flagpole by your wedgie.
Woke is really just a substitute for force. It’s an information operation, an attempt to shape the cultural battlefield by convincing those of us who have the power to do whatever we want to instead do whatever the wokesters want. As long as we give in and go along, it’s great for them. It works. It gives the powerless power over the powerful, or rather, the powerful give the powerless that power either out of moral intimidation or simple exhaustion from the never-ending litany of complaints that characterizes wokeism.
But do you see woke’s vulnerability? We can say no, and there’s not a damn thing these people can do about it.
Now there’s a reason that woke people are so often fat, ugly, and stupid. It’s because they’re the losers. Woke is the tool of the losers; they’ve got nothing else. Its efficacy exists only because of the grace of the winners, and if we stop giving them that grace, it stops being effective. And we give that grace in large part because we’ve been convinced, falsely, that those claiming oppression have some sort of moral edge over the rest of us.
A lot of this stems back to the 70s and 80s popular culture, where nerds were put on a pedestal as somehow morally superior to people who aren’t geeks and goobers. But being picked on does not make you a good person; maybe you were picked on because you suck. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with nerds, but there’s also nothing inherently wrong with non-nerds. Both nerds and non-nerds can be jerks or wonderful. The problem is that we’ve been lied to. We’ve been told that there’s a moral superiority in being a doofus. Look, I love “Revenge of the Nerds” as much as anybody else, but it’s propaganda – dork propaganda. You’re not inherently better because you’re an awkward outsider, nor is your blood corrupted because you’re good at sports and handsome.
Now, we’ve all encountered guys who channel 80s-movies’ James Spader type, the good-looking, rich, popular creep. Those guys certainly exist, but you have something of the authoritarian versus totalitarian issue going on. Remember how Jeane Kirkpatrick differentiated between the two, with authoritarians just wanting to be in charge so they can get rich and the totalitarians wanting control of your mind. The James Spader type doesn’t care about you or what you think; he wants his cocaine and models. But the nerd wants more than just power – the nerd wants revenge for all the endless wrongs he is convinced that he has endured at the hands of normal people. Where James Spader merely wants obedience, the empowered nerd gets off on bending you to his will and making you submit: 2 + 2 = 5, and a man can become a woman, you transphobe. Nothing illustrates this better than that classic Simpsons episode where Lisa and the other nerds suddenly get absolute power and it corrupts them absolutely and hysterically.
Well, woke is the weapon nerds use to get that power. But to get that power, we have to give it to them. Like I said, they can’t take it. It’s not as if they’re going to show up clad in Kevlar with M4s to kick down our doors and make us comply – that happens once they obtain some hard power and find some normal people to go do their dirty work for them. Take England, for example. Their cops, mostly working- and middle-class folks, have betrayed their own castes and become enforcers for a bunch of post-leftist sociopaths who somehow managed to grab the levers of governmental control, then acted exactly as you might expect them to. England is now a country where you get free stuff if you break the law by breaking into it, but if you dare speak freely, it’s off to jail.
The risk here in America is that they somehow achieve governmental power and convince those who carry guns on behalf of the government to betray their own people and become their enforcers. Thank goodness for the Second Amendment. The fact that we are a nation of armed citizens – American civilians currently hold roughly 40 percent of all the guns in the world, though we need to pump up those rookie numbers – makes the decision to pull on the jackboots exponentially riskier to collaborators here than it is in a country where the population consists of a bunch of disarmed serfs.
But that’s their goal down the road; it’s not what’s happening right now as Woke 2 attempts to be born. We’re still at the endless nagging phase. Examples are all around us, including the Cornell 7 case, where they are demanding that the men who, as the evidence shows, simply acknowledged and affirmed the frisky young lady’s erotic empowerment are being held up as evidence of how the patriarchy is out of control. The frat bros’ gross behavior notwithstanding, the play hasn’t quite worked. Woke 2 is dealing with a world where alternative media is even better developed than it was under Woke 1, so all the facts are getting out, grody and nasty as they are. That disrupts the victimization narrative of the innocent young lady who only wanted to blast ketamine off the quivering bodies of multiple dudes as a prelude to erotic action that would turn the stomach of a San Francisco pride parader.
In popular culture, they are again attempting to shame people into compliance as they did under Woke 1, and that’s not working either. Metallica’s lead singer told his audience the band was there to rock, not talk politics, and that outraged the Woke 2 set no end. Yes, it’s not enough for them that you be silent; you have to actively affirm their latest thing. In this case, it was the mythical construct of Palestine – as with anything leftist, Woke 2 closely correlates with hating the Jews. In any case, the Metallica guy just ignored them and went on to continue to sell out massive stadiums.
And there was Sydney Sweeney, who committed the crime of being attractive and heterosexual. She sought the male gaze instead of pretending to be outraged by it. That’s unforgivable. Remember, the nerds are mad because they are unattractive and no one wants them. Woke 2 is largely about working out personal psychodramas using normal people like us as props; it’s all about the daddy issues. The fact is that wokesters are bitter because they can’t get a guy or a girl or whatever, so instead of trying to become beautiful, they have to negate the concept of beauty. In Woke 1, this manifested in them trying to make Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer starlets. But human nature won’t change, which frustrates them no end. And even more frustrating is that Sydney Sweeney just didn’t care. She’s collecting her money, being popular, and shaming them because they can never be what she is.
Then there’s Shane Gillis. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t rolled over after his “Saturday Night Live” monologue, where he pointed out that some women go to the gym looking like they are cruising up and down a city block open for business. And he was right – ladies, we just want to blast our quads, not provide an impromptu gynecological exam for attention-seeking trollops. Now, you might note the incongruity between Team Woke being mad at Sydney Sweeney busting out with wholesome sexuality and defending women busting out – sometimes literally – with not-so-wholesome sexuality. But there’s no incongruity. Woke is not about consistency; it’s about saying whatever needs to be said to obtain the most cultural power at any given moment. And props to Shane Gillis for, at least so far, ignoring them. Let’s hope he moves on to the next stage, actively mocking them, and not to submitting like the pretty new boy on the cell block by explaining how this whole thing has made him learn so much about how the patriarchy is bad and how he’s sorry and waa waa waa.
Of course, the ultimate nemesis of woke is Donald Trump. One of the many reasons they detest him is that he simply doesn’t care what they think; to them, that’s a hate crime. The power of not caring is our atomic bomb, and this guy is Harry Truman. Nothing makes them madder than people who either ignore them or laugh at them, and Trump does both. You saw how mad they got when that blubbery behemoth started running his/her/its mouth at his rally the other day and got dragged out. Trump called the creature “fat,” and Woke 2 nearly had a stroke because not only did Trump defy them, but what he said was true. Remember, truth is to a wokester as garlic is to a vampire.
And you can do it too. You don’t need to submit to these weirdos. You can defy them. Never care. Laugh at them. They think they’ve seized the moral high ground when they call you racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, fat-phobic, whatever. Well, call in an airstrike on that high ground. They’ve got nothing. There’s literally nothing they can do to you except cry more, and it’s funny when they cry.
There are two ways of looking at the midterms, now less than three weeks away.
One is as a simple referendum on the issues and politicians of the day. The other involves a far deeper conflict of visions (as Thomas Sowell puts it): socialism versus capitalism, intrusive versus limited government, and the destruction of time-honored institutions and traditions versus their preservation and renewal.
Rarely in American history have the two parties been so far apart or the choice between them so stark. In brief, Islamist-sympathizing socialism is on the ballot against free-market capitalism and American exceptionalism.
The new Islamist-allied socialist Democratic Party is confident, largely because the party holding the White House has increased its share of House seats in a midterm election only three times since 1900. Each of those exceptions arose under unusual circumstances.
In 1934, FDR was still riding the wave of his New Deal promises to end the Depression.
In 1998, Bill Clinton enjoyed backlash support after the Republicans’ unpopular impeachment inquiry, at a time when the economy was robust, and the budget was finally being balanced.
In 2002, George W. Bush had united the nation after 9/11 and had not yet begun what proved to be an unpopular Iraq War.
In other words, the party in the White House has gained House seats in only about 10 percent of the 31 midterms over the past 126 years. Pundits also point to Trump’s approval rating, now below 40 percent in most polls, and the persistently high price of regular gasoline ($4.33). Uncertainty over the 33-week Iran war, they argue, makes it difficult for Trump to preserve his majorities in either the House or the Senate.
Those are the issues ostensibly at stake. But the choice goes much further than that: voters face a “deep” midterm election that will help determine the very future existence of the nation.
The new Democratic agenda is not about lowering gas prices. Americans are being asked to hand Congress to what has become the most radical major party in U.S. history, as socialists and neo-communists believe they can finally win statewide races across the country. What would that entail?
Lawfare
The Democrats have not outlined any agenda other than “Trump! Trump! And more Trump!”
If they win the House, Democrats plan to spend the next two years impeaching, investigating, and hounding Trump, his administration, and his family. Their aim is to block new Republican legislation and paralyze the remainder of his presidency.
The Iran War
The Left condemns the effort to denuclearize Iran as a lost war, even though the United States has nearly destroyed the Iranian theocratic apparatus along with much of the country’s nuclear, military, industrial, and economic infrastructure—at a relatively low cost in blood and treasure by historical standards.
An enfeebled Iran, stripped of its military and economic dominance and facing an uncertain future, would no longer be able to blackmail or threaten Europe and North America as a nuclear-armed theocracy. Its terrorist clients would also lose funding, weapons, and leadership, with profound consequences for the Middle East.
When the war ends—as it soon will—and gas prices return to previous levels, policies already in place, including tax cuts, deregulation, foreign investment, energy development, and advances in AI, should help fuel an economic boom.
But the Democrats’ plan is simply to withdraw from Iran, count on the goodwill of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to guarantee free passage in the Strait of Hormuz, allow Iran to resume full oil production, and accept the Iranian regime’s word that it will no longer threaten the Gulf states or Israel and cease its decades-long support for the terrorist proxies—Hezbollah, Hamas, and, more recently, the Houthis.
Energy
The party that has repeatedly blocked federal oil and gas leases, canceled the construction or reconstruction of dozens of pipelines, and spent billions of dollars to subsidize unreliable, costly, and inefficient solar and wind power is now promising to lower the price of fossil fuels? Who really believes that?
Instead, the Left has vowed to end the production of natural gas, diesel, and gasoline as quickly as possible. Voters need only look at the once robust British and German economies, now struggling after years of restrictions on oil and natural gas exploration and development, as well as Germany’s elimination of nuclear power.
We should recall Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu. He infamously let slip that his goal was to keep American energy prices at European levels. In the UK and Germany, gasoline is currently around $9 a gallon—a great thing for Democratic Socialists who see high fuel prices as the best way to cool the planet and remain in power.
Gasoline in the United States now averages only $4.33 despite Iranian oil being off the market, attacks in the Gulf, and Iran’s attempted blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The reason is that Democrats were prevented from blocking new fossil fuel leases, pipelines, refineries, and fracking between 2017 and 2021 and again from 2025 onward.
Immigration
Almost none of the current Democratic candidates—at least until the eve of the 2024 election—criticized the Biden administration’s destruction of the southern border, much less the open-armed embrace with which it welcomed some 10–12 million illegal aliens, including 500,000 criminals.
The Left wants to dismantle border enforcement and the wall and to ensure that the current near-zero level of illegal immigration expands to the Biden administration’s peak of 10,000-plus illegal entries per day. Voters may be disturbed by ICE detentions, but they should remember a high-profile ICE presence was only necessary because the border was effectively eliminated by Biden.
By contrast, it is almost impossible now to find Biden’s millions of illegal aliens who were deliberately dispersed by the Left throughout the country—and particularly into Democratic sanctuary-city states. The Left will never close the border. Nor will it ever allow immigration to become entirely legal, meritocratic, diverse, and manageable, because to do so would cut off the Left’s supply of future constituents.
Fraud
Some estimates put aggregate current federal-program fraud at nearly $500 billion annually.
There is also widespread welfare and social services fraud concentrated in blue states like California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York.
In these states, welfare and social services are generous and, by design, subject to little scrutiny. Fraud is treated as a minor problem in what Democrats regard as a successful effort to attract voters with federal and state dollars. Few major Democratic officeholders sincerely denounce such fraud, since doing so could cost them votes.
DEI
The idea that race, outward appearance, gender, and sexual preference are essential rather than incidental to one’s identity is a central doctrine of the contemporary Left.
Should the Left regain power, expect de facto nullification of the bans against racial tribalism found in federal law and Supreme Court rulings. Race-based hiring, admissions, dorms, and graduations would return and proliferate.
The demands for reparations would likely regain traction, as they already are doing in California, a state with no history of slavery and 27 percent of the resident population born outside the United States.
The Left believes that people who were never slaves are owed billions of dollars by a government already $40 trillion in debt—and that people who never owned slaves must atone for an institution abolished 161 years ago. Slaveowners accounted for about 1.4 percent of the nation, almost all in the South. That some 700,000 Americans died in a civil war that ended slavery seems to be of absolutely zero importance to the Left.
Islamism
Only a quarter-century after 9/11, Islamism is somehow on the ballot. After October 7, the Democratic Party embraced the philo-Islamist/socialist view that sees radical Islam as not so radical after all. For them, theocratic Islamism is a legitimate and indeed preferable alternative to democratic Israel and increasingly a legitimate alternative to Western values and laws.
There is not a single truly democratic state in the Islamic Middle East, where women, gays, and non-Muslims are de facto second-class citizens. And yet we are told by many on the new Left that there is no real difference between Iran and Israel and that the terrorist organization Hamas is Israel’s innocent victim.
The apparently new leftist-Islamist alliance is actually not so new. We see its dividends now in a burning Paris. Decades earlier, that political partnership destroyed the Shah’s regime and ushered in nearly 50 years of Iranian theocratic tyranny.
Opposition to radical Islam and illegal immigration, along with justifiable anger toward a class of elites who seem openly to hate Western civilization, explains why reform and remigration parties are gaining traction all over Europe. Indeed, in the continent’s eleventh hour, Europeans are starting to fight open borders, unassimilated immigration from the Middle East, radical green ideologies, and disarmament. Why would we vote into power what the Europeans are now desperately trying to eject from office?
We already know what will happen when the new Democrats take power. After all, they are only promising to do to America what socialists have already done to now-floundering Europe, Canada, and California.
Before the election, voters should also ask themselves why more than two million Americans each year are fleeing the blue-state socialist model.
The answer? On taxes, regulations, cost of living, housing affordability, crime, and state budgets, red and purple states consistently outperform blue states. Americans already vote with their feet; they should remember those differences when they cast their ballots.
Finally, voters should also ask themselves why the current crop of Islamist-adjacent socialists always needs to cleanse their social media accounts. Why must they retract their prior bombast? Why do they attack questioners rather than answer questions about their past?
Why do we all know that what they say and do after being elected will be exactly what they said and did before they ran for office?
By contrast, are conservatives, Republicans, or independents serially trashing the United States in the manner of Democratic Socialists like Hasan Piker, who said that the United States is worse than al-Qaeda?
Is there a Republican counterpart to James Talarico, who scrambles to retract remarks describing capitalism as an “oppressive system” that needs to be “dismantled” or suggesting that “white skin” confers immunity to the “virus of racism”?
Or is there anyone among the conservatives remotely resembling Representative Ilhan Omar, who declared that America is “one of the worst countries”? Or like Darializa Avila Chevalier, who called the United States “a f–king disgrace”?
Are they demonizing the majority of the American people in the manner of Zohran Mamdani’s housing czar, Cea Weaver, who declared that homeownership is “a weapon of white supremacy”? Or like Melat Kiros, who argues that “We were never really going to be able to tackle white supremacy in the way that we need to without reparations”?
Could anyone imagine Republican or conservative candidates apologizing for terrorism in the manner of marquee Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who responded to a cowardly Islamist attack on a synagogue with “Hurt people do hurt people”?
In short, treat this midterm election as the deep choice that it is.
On the left is Madeleine McCann, and Eugenea Collins, who claims to be the missing girl, is on the right. Family of Madeleine McCann/ Eugenea Collins / Facebook
An American woman from Arkansas is claiming that she is the real Madeleine McCann, a British girl who disappeared in 2007 while on a family vacation in Portugal.
Eugenea Collins, 22, began posting her claims on Instagram in September 2024 with the username TheOfficialMadeleineMcCann, and the account features numerous side-by-side photos of Collins and McCann.
In her most recent post, Collins shared an ancestry DNA test that shows she is 68 per cent English and northwestern European, which she believes supports her claims.
Collins claims she has struggled to obtain official identification, including her birth certificate. In an Instagram post from November 2024, Collins wrote, “I am 22 years old and my birthday is October 23rd 2002. I am unable to get an id due to my paperwork not having the same matching name all of the way across.”
“I have also never seen an original birth certificate just the one from after my stepdad adopted me which created one and ‘sealed’ off everything and up until 2018 you weren’t Able to ever have the stuff opened back up,” she added.
“Without an id I can’t go to college or even get a job so I can support myself. I graduated high school a year early and I could really do something with my life if given the opportunity.”
In another social media post, Collins shared photos of her biological father, named Eugene, and claimed he looked similar to Christian Brueckner, who was under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of McCann.
“I was always told the man in the photos was my biological father Eugene Collins. The man I’m named after. I never had any relationship with this man whatsoever and I was always told he was a little off in the head,” Collins wrote.
“My mother never allowed us to have any kind of relationship with him whatsoever and now I understand why.”
Collins said that she’s “met him a couple of times” and claims he’s “always been weird about his picture being taken.”
“When I first saw the photos of Christian Bruckner I instantly recognized that man,” Collins wrote.
Brueckner hasn’t been formally charged in the McCann case. He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of McCan’s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
Collins also told the U.K. tabloid Daily Mail that she first began to think she was McCann when she saw Polish woman Julia Wandel claim the same thing while appearing on Dr. Phil.
“If it wasn’t for me seeing her on the Dr. Phil show I would’ve never known. In a way her stupidity actually helped me find my family,” Collins claimed. “I saw the age progressions and it was like I was looking in a mirror. I just know I saw pictures of myself online and it says I’m missing.”
Collins said she has tried to contact police in Arkansas about her claims but they have not taken her seriously.
This comes just days after Wandel, also known as Julia Wandelt or Julia Wendell, was arrested and accused of stalking McCann’s family by contacting them incessantly and turning up at their home in the U.K.
Wandel was arrested on Wednesday at an airport in Bristol.
According to the outlet, she has been charged with stalking four members of the McCann family — parents Gerry and Kate, and twin siblings Sean and Amelie — throughout 2024 and into 2025. She is also alleged to have paid unwanted and unsolicited visits to their home twice, in May and December of last year.
The charges state the alleged contact, which came in the form of phone calls, voicemails, a letter and WhatsApp and Instagram messages, “had a substantial adverse effect” on the family.
In 2023, Wandel began posting numerous pieces of “evidence” to social media, saying she believed she might be the missing McCann.
Her spokesperson said a DNA test confirmed Wandel was not the missing girl. In fact, the test showed that Wandel has near 100 per cent Polish heritage, with no evidence of British or even German ancestry.
Polish police disputed Wandel’s claims that she was McCann about a week after she reached viral fame and Wandel’s own parents spoke out about her campaign, saying they were “devastated” by her claims and the worldwide media attention they garnered.
— With files from Global News’ Michelle Butterfield and The Associated Press
